LOA for Awhile

I'll be on a leave of absense for awhile, from June 28th to sometime after August 6th I'll be away at Basic Training at the US Air Force Academy.

If anyone needs to contact the EDG team please email Gelco, the lead developer, at chrishill2001@hotmail.com

I wish you all well and I'll be back in August!

Robert

EDG's New Game Engine

As I mentioned in the newsletter and on the Etherea: Dark Genesis main site, we have been able to get a new and better engine for developing Etherea: Dark Genesis. The game engine is C++ based and has many added features to the one we were previously using as well as better graphics.

The new game engine has a physics engine, better texturing abilities, better network code to allow more players to be online at one time only being limited by our hardware, actual lighting, etc.

Gelco got a hold of the engine and has been working closely with R@nsid to get used to the engine. Today Gelco was able to get R@nsid's models to work in the game, he set up a small server, and imported some buildings into the new game engine. Everything seems to be running smoothly and you can already tell the difference between this game engine and the one we were previously using.

The June 20th Alpha Test will still occur using the old game engine so that the Alpha Testers can see the difference in the engines. When Alpha re-opens with the new game engine the Alpha Testers that were chosen for the June 20th Alpha Test will be invited back to test throughout the game's testing phases.

These changes are very exciting and we are all looking forward to all the new things, like real AI, we can do in this game engine.

Changes on the Horizon

Recently Gelco closed the ability to apply for the Alpha Test not only because the deadline was reached but because we had so many people apply that we could use these applications for the next couple of tests (don't worry when we get ready for another test we will open the process again). This was exciting for Gelco and I as it means that many are interested in EDG, which is always a great thing to a game developer.

Tomorrow there will be a dev meeting for EDG in which all the developers will talk about what is going on, what direction the game is being taken in, and things to come. One of the topics of discussion is currently a surprise to the public but it'll be a great change to EDG that will be for the better.

Also, tomorrow it will be one year since Etherea: Dark Genesis' development was started. One year ago I started planning the world of Etherea and obtained some online forums. I began recruiting people for the team and soon there after Gelco came on board. We obtained a game engine and started making our game, ever since then we've been building a more productive and stable team and getting closer to launching our game. It's very exciting as most indie teams/games aren't around that long and usually disband in the first couple of months, I believe it speaks a lot for Etherea.

I'll post again soon with what was discussed at the dev meeting so hang in there and good luck!

The June Alpha Test Approaches

The team started taking applications for the June Alpha Test today, all applications need to be in on the 10th and if you need to know how to apply just visit us at www.etherea-dg.com. We are still very busy around the team getting some final things together including a few more models animated and some quests put in. Hopefully we'll have a few finished terrains done so that we can plug them in to the game as well for players to wander around in.

So far I am very happy with how things are coming together and how much work people are putting into this Alpha test, although it'll be very basic it should be a very good test.

The June Alpha Test will take place on June 20th and hopefully in July-August we'll have a lot more content added to bring in a good number of additional testers.